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The origin and functioning
of circumstantial clause linkers:
a cross-linguistic study

Anna Martowicz

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy

to
Linguistic and English Language
School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences
The University of Edinburgh

2011
© Copyright 2011

by

Anna Martowicz
Declaration

I herby declare that this thesis is my own composition and
that it contains no materials previously submitted for the
award of any other degree as well as that the work reported
here has been executed by myself.

I
ABSTRACT

The thesis analyses a variety of clause linkers used in the world’s languages as
dedicated markers of four circumstantial relations between states of affairs: anteriority
(‘after’), causality (‘because’), purpose (‘in order to’) and conditionality (‘if’).
Focusing primarily on the function of the linkers rather than on their formal properties
the study scrutinizes the origin and functioning of free-word adverbial subordinators,
converbal endings as well as other subordinating affixes and polymorphemic structures
specialized for clause-linking functions. The database consist of nearly 700 items which
come from a geographically and genetically balanced sample of 84 languages.
In the first part of the thesis I discuss in detail the scope of the study, theoretical
foundations (functional approach to language analysis) and methodology. In the second
part I focus on the issues of grammaticalization and semantic scope of the linkers. The
analysis of patterns of polysemy of the linkers, as well as the make-up of the
polymorphemic items among them provide material for the reconstruction of the most
common sources and pathways of grammaticalization. Looking closer at the patterns of
semantic polyfunctionality (i.e. other circumstantial meanings that the clause linkers
convey in addition to being markers of the four analysed relations) I reveal the
architecture of the network of their cognitive affinities. The result of this investigation
is a set of findings, which add to our understanding of the origin and functioning of the
markers – a topic which has received little attention so far.
The third part of the dissertation is dedicated to the analysis of the cross-
linguistic variation in the degree of grammaticalization, lexicalization and explicitness
of the linkers and discussion on the motivations behind their development. The main
body of the analyses is focused on the investigation of the potential influence of a
variety of socio-cultural factors on the variations observed. The factors include those
most often mentioned in the context of the forces shaping language structure: presence
and vitality of written form as well as other media of displaced communication,
presence of the language in schooling, population size of the speech community, and
type of society. The results obtained show that the degrees of grammaticalization,
lexicalization and explicitness are much stronger correlated with socio-cultural factors
for anteriority and conditionality than for causality and purpose. In order to account for
the differences I evoke the concepts of cognitive salience and communicative pressure
arguing that the influence of socio-cultural factors on language structure should always
be considered in a broader context which includes also pragmatics and cognitive
psychology.

II
Acknowledgements

Both I and this dissertation owe a lot to many wonderful people.

First of all, I would like to thank Ronnie Cann for being the best supervisor a PhD
student can dream of. Thank you for your wisdom, knowledge, kindness, patience,
understanding and support. Thank you for allowing me to wander around the labyrinth
of linguistics watching my steps at the same time and summoning me back to the right
tracks on all those occasions when I was just about to enter the Dark Forests. It has
been a great pleasure and a great honour to work under your wings.

My sincere thanks go also to Jim Hurford and Simon Kirby – my secondary supervisors
– and to the members of the Language Evolution and Computation Research Unit as
well as the entire Linguistics and English Language Department at the University of
Edinburgh for creating a perfect research environment in which sharing of the linguistic
experience and expertise is truly part of everyday life.

My PhD studies and completion of the thesis would not be possible without the
generous support of the College of Arts and Humanities at the University of Edinburgh
who awarded me with a scholarship and studentship making the most fantastic journey
of my life possible. The same concerns all the small grants that the School of
Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences awarded me throughout the years
helping me to finance conference attendances and research visits abroad. Thank you for
having confidence in my abilities.

I wish to express also my utmost gratitude towards all those linguists with whom I
exchanged within these four years over a thousand e-mails in total, and whose
contribution to this thesis cannot be underestimated. In no particular order I am
expressing my thanks to: Charles Morfo, Sidney da Silva Facundes, Luise Hercus,
Janet Watson, Xabier Artiagoitia, Swintha Danielsen, Ross McCallum Jones, Bertil
Tikkanen, Steven Jacobson, Michael Dunn, Nancy Morse, Nicky de Jong, Volker
Heeschen, Ronnie Cann, Ron Looker, Mati Erelt, Mark Post, Regine Koroma, Ger
Reesink, Malami Buba, Philip Jaggar, Paul Newman, Amar Singh, Akira Yamamoto,
Paul Frank, Carl Rubino, Niclas Burenhult, Yuri Shinya, Kaori Miura-Dowman, Robert
Pensalfini, John Hutchison, David Solnit, Andrey Nefedov, Christa Kilian-Hatz,
Ongaye Oda, Alain Kihm, Angela Terrill, Heleen Plaisier, Aone van Engelenhoven, Jan
van Eijk, Wenshan Li, Gilles Gravelle, George Huttar, Noel Rude, Marie Lucie
Tarpent, Ekaterina Gruzdeva, Chao-Lin Li, Chunming, Maciej Grochowski, David
III
Weber, Colette Grinevald, Clay Strom, Elizabeth Zeitoun, Christina Thornell,
Madhusudan Mishra, Paul Sidwell, Arthur Holmer, Stephen Marlett, Zouhir Gabsi,
Thomas Willett, Assibi Amidu, Bhuvana Narasimhan, Vipas Pothipath, Shoichi
Iwasaki, René van den Berg, Rachel Nordlinger, Victoria Rau, John Bradley, William
Foley, Jane Simpson

All of you have taught me more than I could have imagined – not only about the less
and more exotic languages but also about the art of linguistics and fieldwork. Thank
you for your time, kindness, patience and for your interest in my study. I hope that in
the future I will have many occasions to share with others what I have learned from you
– at both professional and personal level.

My thanks go also to the Linguistic Department at the Max Planck Institute for
Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig for making my three research stays in the
Institute: in November 2007, September-October 2008 and March-April 2009 such a
wonderful experience. I am grateful to Bernard Comrie, Martin Haspelmath, David Gil
and Juliette Blevins for finding time to share with me their thoughts on my research and
linguistics in general and for all the useful comments I received from them. I will not
forget about the staff of the Institute’s library who were always ready to help me
during the hundreds of hours that I spent among their collections and about Julia
Cissewski for her help in organizing the research stays.

Ron Looker – thank you for proofreading of this thesis and for all the discussions we
had about English and Polish in the last two years.

Finally, I wish to thank my husband and my daughter, my mum, my sisters, and
parents-in-law for their constant support and encouragement throughout these years.
You’ve been wonderful.

IV
CONTENTS

Glossing conventions and abbreviations XI

INTRODUCTION 1

PART I Scope of the study, theoretical premises and methodology 7

CHAPTER 1 Circumstantial relations between clauses 9
1.1. The notion of state of affairs and clause 9
1.2. Relations between states of affairs and relations between clauses 10
1.3. Classifications of circumstantial clauses 12
1.4. The focus of the study 14
1.4.1. Anteriority 15
1.4.2. Causality 16
1.4.3. Purpose 16
1.4.4. Conditionality 17
1.5. Strategies of encoding of circumstantial relations 18
1.5.1. Problems in defining subordination 19
1.5.2. Overview of the strategies 21
1.5.3. Thompson and Longacre’s overview of strategies 28
1.5.4. Towards a unified, function-based classification 30
1.6. Summary 34
CHAPTER 2 Theoretical foundations and methodology 35
2.1. Theoretical foundations and approach to the analysed domain 35
2.1.1. Function-based definition of the studied subject 35
2.1.2. Instruments of analysis and explanatory apparatus 37
2.2. Language sample 40
2.3. Data collection 44
2.3.1. The database 44
2.3.2 .Source 1: published materials 46
2.3.3. Source 2: the questionnaire 47
2.4. Summary 48

PART II Sources and semantic scope of c-glossemes 51

CHAPTER 3 Background and parameters of analysis 54
3.1. Forms and morphological complexity of c-glossemes 54
3.2. Insight into the origin of c-glossemes 57
3.2.1. Grammaticalization and its mechanisms 58
V
3.2.2. Polysemy 60
3.2.3. Grammaticalization pathways and the unidirectionality hypothesis 61
3.2.4. Multiple pathways and polygrammaticalization 63
3.2.5. Fixing, freezing and idiomatization 66
3.2.6. Types of evidence 67
3.2.7. Clause linkers and language contact 68
3.2.8. Previous studies on the origin of circumstantial clause linkers 70
3.2.9. Methods and assumptions – a summary 76
3.3. Insight into the semantic organization of the network of c-glossemes 79
3.3.1. Degree of semantic polyfunctionality 80
3.3.2. Previous studies on the polyfunctionality of clause linkers 82
3.3.3. Goals, methods and assumptions 84
3.4. Summary 84
CHAPTER 4 Anteriority 87
4.1. Morphological complexity and forms of c-glossemes 87
4.2. Insight into origins 89
4.2.1. Syntactic polyfunctionality and patterns of polysemy 89
4.2.2. Polymorphemic markers and their internal structure 100
4.3. Semantic polyfunctionality and cognitive affinity 105
4.4. Summary 115
CHAPTER 5 Causality 117
5.1. Morphological complexity and forms of c-glossemes 117
5.2. Insight into origins 118
5.2.1. Syntactic polyfunctionality and patterns of polysemy 118
5.2.2. Polymorphemic markers and their internal structure 130
5.3. Semantic polyfunctionality and cognitive affinity 136
5.4. Summary 148
CHAPTER 6 Purpose 149
6.1. Morphological complexity and forms of c-glossemes 149
6.2. Insight into origins 150
6.2.1. Syntactic polyfunctionality and patterns of polysemy 150
6.2.2. Polymorphemic markers and their internal structure 165
6.3. Semantic polyfunctionality and cognitive affinity 172
6.4. Summary 180
CHAPTER 7 Conditionality 183
7.1. Morphological complexity and forms of c-glossemes 183
7.2. Insight into origins 184
7.2.1. Syntactic polyfunctionality and patterns of polysemy 184
7.2.2. Polymorphemic markers and their internal structure 197
VI
7.3. Semantic polyfunctionality and cognitive affinity 202
7.4. Summary 212
CHAPTER 8 Comparisons and conclusions 215
8.1. Forms of c-glossemes 215
8.2. Degrees of morphological complexity 224
8.3. Degrees of syntactic polyfunctionality 225
8.4. Degrees of semantic polyfunctionality 228
8.5. Sources of c-glossemes 231
8.5.1. Evidence from the observation of patterns of polysemy 231
8.5.2. Evidence from the analysis of incorporated material 235
8.5.3. Other c-glossemes as sources 237
8.5.4. The emerging picture 238
8.6. Semantic affinities between the relations 239

PART III Cross-linguistic variation and its socio-cultural correlates 241

CHAPTER 9 Degrees of grammaticalization, lexicalization and explicitness 244
9.1. Degree of grammaticalization 244
9.1.1. Data coding and analysis 245
9.1.2. Geographic distribution 248
9.1.3. Summary 256
9.2. Degree of lexicalization 256
9.2.1. The notion of lexicalization 256
9.2.2. Data coding and analysis 257
9.2.3. Geographic distribution 260
9.2.4. Summary 265
9.3. Degree of explicitness 266
9.3.1. The notion of explicitness 266
9.3.2. Data coding and analysis 267
9.3.3. Geographic distribution 276
9.3.4. Explicitness and borrowing 279
9.3.5. Summary 282
9.4. Conclusions 283
CHAPTER 10 Influence of socio-cultural factors 285
10.1. Hypotheses and previous studies 286
10.1.1. Society structure 287
10.1.2. Written form and other modes of displaced communication 288
10.1.3. Contact 291
10.2. Parameters and design of the analysis 294
VII